Portugal's Dinosaurs Get Their Due at Last

By MARVINE HOWE

Published: August 8, 2000

LISBON—
At the urging of eminent Portuguese paleontologists, the government is acting to protect the country's rich array of dinosaur fossils and tracks, threatened now by the forces of erosion and development.

Many of the fossils turned up along the Atlantic coast of Portugal. Among recent finds were a dinosaur nest with scores of eggs, several containing embryos; a skull with well-preserved neck vertebrae of a theropod, a carnivorous bipedal dinosaur; and the world's longest track way left by sauropods, giant plant eaters that walked on all fours. But dinosaur fossils and tracks have long been noticed there, though people did not always realize what they were.

Prominent paleontologists like Martin G. Lockley of the University of Colorado, Philippe Taquet of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, Jose Bonaparte of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences have recognized the exceptional value of these fossils and have worked with Portuguese scientists on a number of scientific papers in connection with these discoveries.

''Portugal is a showcase for dinosaur resources now that we know they have good bones, tracks, eggs and embryos,'' Professor Lockley said in an interview during the International Dinosaur Conference in Lisbon in 1998. He pointed out that tracks and the vertebrate record ''are very sparse globally'' from the Middle Jurassic -- 175 million years ago -- and, until recently, there were surprisingly few reports of well-preserved track ways from the Late Jurassic or 145 million years ago.

''Up to present, there exists a legal void concerning our paleontological resources,'' Prof. Miguel Telles Antunes of the Nova University at Lisbon, who heads the scientific group, said in an interview last month. For example, he said, people who unearth a dinosaur egg or even a complete skeleton in Portugal are not obliged to inform the authorities and may dispose of them any way they wish.

To remedy the situation, Jose Mariano Gago, minister of science and technology, said in an interview that the government planned to set up a National Council for Paleontology under his ministry by October. The government is also studying proposals for the establishment of museums to protect the most important track sites.

Finally, paleontology, including studies on the protection of paleontological resources, has been established as a new separate research field with financing from the National Science Foundation. Portuguese scientists have complained that despite the national wealth in fossils, paleontology and paleobiology of dinosaur studies were limited to a couple of hours in connection with a master's degree in biology.

Actually, the Portuguese have been aware of large fossil footprints on certain cliffs since the Middle Ages but had given them a religious significance. For example, according to a 13th century legend, footprints up the steep cliff at Cape Espichel, south of Lisbon, were made by a giant mule that rescued the Virgin from Lagosteiros Bay and carried her up the steep cliff to safety. A popular shrine to Our Lady of the Mule was built at the cape.

In 1976, Professor Antunes identified the footprints as those of a giant theropod of the Late Jurassic Portlandian age. In fact, he said, the Lagosteiros cliffs are one of the richest sites in Europe for dinosaur tracks from the Lower Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago.

Meanwhile, there has been a surge of fossil discoveries from the Late Jurassic, 145 million years ago, in what is known as the Lusitanian Basin.

Lourinha, an ancient farm town near the coast, is the site of the most impressive fossil discoveries and its small museum, established in 1980, contains the most varied and best-preserved paleontological collection in the country. Lourinha is also the home of the Ethnological and Archeological Group of Lourinha, known by its Portuguese acronym as GEAL (pronounced JAY-al). Like the museum, GEAL was formed by the Mateus family (no relation to the wine producers).

It was Isabel Mateus, an amateur speleologist, who made a major discovery in 1993 on a seaside cliff at Paimogo, north of Lourinha, when she chanced upon a large cluster of eggs while walking with her 3-year-old daughter, Marta.

She immediately recognized the black oval eggs as belonging to dinosaurs, even though they were largely broken into fragments.

Mrs. Mateus, her husband, Horacio, a retired government tax employee, their son Octavio, a biology student, and a number of villagers painstakingly excavated and cleaned six large blocks containing more than 100 eggs. In the process, over three summers, they found some eggs with embryos and many tiny bones, adult theropod teeth and fragments of three crocodile-like eggs.

Later with help from Professor Antunes and Professor Taquet, the Mateuses identified the Paimogo eggs as theropod remains, dating from the Upper Jurassic and resembling those found in the Upper Jurassic of Colorado.

''With the Paimogo discovery, we have the extremely rare opportunity to correlate a shell morphotype with taxonomically identified dinosaur bones,'' Professor Taquet said at Lisbon's First International Meeting on Dinosaur Paleobiology in 1998. He called the clutches ''exceptional'' because dinosaur eggs in Jurassic beds are very rare, generally come in smaller clutches of 12 to 24 eggs and rarely contain embryos.